MicroStrategy, the veteran software company known for betting billions on Bitcoin, is reinventing itself to better reflect its pivot to crypto.
Founded by Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor, the company announced Wednesday that it will now be called Strategy and described itself as “the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company.” Since 2020, the organization has accumulated more than $45 billion worth of Bitcoin, making it the single largest corporate Bitcoin holder.
“Strategy is one of the most powerful and positive words in the human language,” Saylor, the company’s executive chairman, said in a statement. “It also represents a simplification of our company name to its most important, strategic core.”
The rebrand also includes the adoption of the Bitcoin “₿” symbol as the company’s new logo, as well as a color scheme change. The company will now use bright orange, which it says represents “energy, intelligence, and Bitcoin.” The changes come as the organization released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, reporting a net loss of $671 million and a 3% slide in revenue.
MicroStrategy began investing in Bitcoin in 2020, under the guidance of Saylor, tapping capital markets—selling additional shares in the company and issuing convertible debt—to raise enough money to make consistent purchases of the original cryptocurrency. The company has accelerated the rate of these acquisitions in recent months. The company now holds more than 471,000 Bitcoins, or over 2% of the total supply of 21 million.
Because of this, the company’s stock has become a kind of proxy for Bitcoin, attracting investors who want access to the digital asset’s price movements without the complexities and volatility involved with holding the currency directly.
This tactic has proved to be extremely lucrative for the company, which has seen major growth in the past year. The company’s stock price is up 565% in 12 months, partly driven by Bitcoin’s recent bull run in which the currency reached a new all-time high of $109,000. Last month, the company was included in the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index for the first time.